More laughs than a barrel of monkeys

 

 What could be better than two beautifully printed books with three thousand New Yorker cartoons, I'll tell you: two beautifully printed books with three thousand New Yorker cartoons and a 250 theme index. So now, depending on your mood, you can laugh at cartoons about desert islands or bananas or jargon or nerds or while you were out or thinking outside the box and dozens of others. 
 
I thought the theme idea lifted the books above the 2004 published 'Complete cartoons of the New Yorker' containing 2004 printed cartoons and two CDs with 68,647 since the weekly started, the only theme in that chunky book was the decades. As well as the themes, editor Bob Mankoff has written various sidebars about particular types of cartoon humor and each page has the name of the cartoonist and the publication date. A nice touch is the use of the New Yorker typeface for various headings throughout the two books (the type was originally designed by Rea Irvin, the weeklies' first Art Editor and then Linotype commissioned Gert Wiescher to create additional weights).

The two books, with 1516 pages in a smart slipcase, will provide plenty of insight on the meaning of life and when you are not looking through them they make a handy doorstop.